I'm your host, Jester. I've been an EVE Online player for about six years. One of my four mains is Ripard Teg, pictured at left. Sadly, I've succumbed to "bittervet" disease, but I'm wandering the New Eden landscape (and from time to time, the MMO landscape) in search of a cure.You can follow along, if you want...

Monday, June 3, 2013

Kill of the Week: A case of the dumbs

Ace Gunnery is starting to build up a pretty interesting reputation as a Jita PvPer and requester of duels with the unwary. Reputation aside, he loses these 1v1s sometimes but overall is building up a pretty enviable record. So apparently this guy thought he'd take Ace Gunnery on in his officer-fit, ludicrously expensive Rook. As you can see, it didn't go well. Lasers also do thermal damage, it turns out, and virtually all of Ace's losses feature ECCM. Whoops! Excellent kill, Ace! As for the Rook pilot... you know I like Rooks, right? But that was pretty dumb...

For honorable mentions, a couple of graphics.

Not exactly a "kill", per se, but this kinda made me smile. It was just a purge of inactive alts, something every corp should do from time to time, but Goons never do things half-way, leaving half their numbers on the floor. It kinda counts. ;-) mynnna's troll about the purge was pretty amusing, too.

And this one definitely counts. It's from the eve-offline Tranquility page during the midst of the server shut-down on Sunday. Someone got themselves a kill-mail on the whole darn galaxy of New Eden. Ouch! That certainly killed my EVE time! Here's the official dev-blog about the shut-down. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the initial hack that I've seen.

But honestly, the biggest kills this week were writprettylarge. It kind of overwhelmed any particular ship kill I might have encountered. Interesting times ahead!

Number of dead super-caps last week: 6

Even with 24 hours off, it was an above average week for super kills, with six total killed... three of them titans! As I briefly mentioned last week, that started with this Tribal Band Avatar, killed a few hours into the new week by NCdot and Pandemic Legion. It's well-covered by both EVE News 24 and themittani.com (EN24 has a second very detailed story about this kill), but mostly appears to be a titan pilot come down with a severe case of the dumbs, moving his titan around solo while a known large enemy sub-cap fleet was moving around the area. Hint: don't do this.

Next up, PURPLE HELMETED WARRIORS did their thing again, and this time caught a Nyx solo-attacking structures in low-sec Derelik. Cumadrin has done one of his write-ups, but really, it's not that different from his last few: good use of directional scanning, good probing skills, and locking down of log-off points until the victim returns for his asset. Kudos for his patience, determination, and technique, though!

Next up was this NPC corp ratting Wyvern, crushed by a good-size HUN Reloaded capital kitchen sink fleet. I wasn't able to find any information on this one. The cyno ship was apparently a Buzzard and not a 10-second self-destruct cyno, though, so the HUN fleet probably got lucky catching this super moving through their territory in Immensea and followed him.

The first of two Fidelas Constans titans killed this week (after losing another last week) was this Erebus, knocked out by a relatively compact Shadow Cartel dread fleet in Gallente low-sec. Again, both EN24 and TMC cover it, and again it's a titan pilot with a really bad case of the dumbs. Short version, he was trying to cross the galaxy solo with his titan using a character named CYNO CBC2 as his jump point at each stop. You see a character with a name like that, why not jump in a Phobos and follow him, see what comes through his eventual cyno? This time it was an Erebus. Infinipoint, bat phone, dead titan, gg.

Next up, this DarkspawnDOT Nyx, killed by a good size SOLAR FLEET super/battleship fleet. SOLAR got pushed out of sov recently, but it doesn't seem to have hurt their membership list all that much. There's a pretty amusing (and true) comment on this KM:

Russian alliances don't die. Instead they get backstabbed to the point where all their guts are across the floor, then they slowly pick up their guts and put them back in and go back to doing what they were doing before.

Yup. How this Nyx got caught, though? Haven't a clue. It died pretty close to Darkspawn space in Insmother with a good size capital fleet around it, which makes me think a structure shoot went badly wrong...

Finally, the remaining super kill was another FCON Erebus, smashed in QPO in Deklein. The Mittani joked recently that unscouted capitals have been dying around this system's cyno generator at a quick pace. That's where this story starts and again both EN24 and TMC cover it. Short version, the titan got bumped away from the cyno generator by other capitals jumping in and instead of patiently following orders, this guy decided to warp to his own POS in the system. Which Black Legion had bubbled. Where they lit a cyno. Where the titan died, after some apprently really nifty counter-defensive moves by Black Legion to prevent a rescue attempt (aided by the titan pilot himself who pulled off his Damage Control).

So this titan died of -- say it with me now -- a case of the dumbs. Lot of that going around this past week, it seems!

Ace gunnery lost 3 legions in may. Only one killmail shows an equipped ECCM module (ECCM omni II).Since Ace hunts mainly in jita we can assume that he is very likely using an off-grid booster, ... probaply fitted with an Information warfare link: sensor integrity II.

On eve forums Malcanis recently estimated the odds for landing a Jam against an ECCM off-grid boosted opponent.

".....and even a Loki pilot with no Information Warfare Mindlink implant will give +28% with the information T2 sensor link fitted.

Multiply that with the +16% from the sensor comp skill, and the highly probably +92% from the ECCM, and that Megathron, for instance will have a sensor strength of 21 x 1.16 x 1.92 x 1.28 = 59.8, giving you about a 1/4 chance of landing a jam on him per cycle.

Assuming you dedicated one racial jammer to the Mega, you have a 3/4 x 3/4 x 3/4 = 27/64 = 42% chance of getting no jam at all in the first minute (I'm assuming you're not lasting more than a minute vs a Megathron in a Rook). You weren't even that unlucky; you just didn't realise how bad the odds were."

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